Monday, October 20, 2014

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5 Tips for Keeping Your Children on Schedule Throughout the Week! #GetGoing #MC

I participated in an Influencer Activation Program on behalf of Influence-Central for Jif To Go Dippers. I received a sample to facilitate my review and a thank you item for participating. All opinions expressed are my own.

One of the things that has become obvious to me over the past year or so is that our family of five is only going to get busier and busier as our children grow older. Every grade they advance means more homework. Every year they mature means they want to be more social and may want to try new extracurricular activities.

At the moment, all three of our children study Taekwondo. If you can somehow manage to have all your children take part in the same activity, I highly recommend it. I do not miss the days of dragging all three children to soccer practice and dance class when only one of them was participating. Still, life is hectic because there's 3 of them and only 2 of us. They outnumber us! Let me share a few tips I've come to find very useful over the past few years . . .

5 Tips for Keeping Your Children on Schedule:

1.Try to always be at least 15 minutes early. If you always try to be early, that means you might only be late about 50% of the time despite having children who try to leave the house without remembering to put on their shoes or need to use the bathroom as you're pulling out of the driveway even though they swore they didn't need to just 10 minutes before.

2.Take homework with you. I know it can be a little stressful to help multiple children with homework while you're out of the house, but it really is a smart way to use your time. While our twins are in Taekwondo class, their big brother does his homework. Then while he is taking his class, the twins do their homework. It works out very well and it may free up an extra half an hour for down time later on, something my children hardly get any of on most weeknights.

3.Complete homework in advance. It may not always be feasible, but if your child gets a week's worth of assignments at once, then it could help if he or she completed an extra assignment or two on a night when there are no activities outside of the house. This makes it much less stressful on the school nights when you do have to leave the house.

4.Keep any gear you need by the door or in the car. No, you probably won't see a big duffel bag full of gear by the front door at Martha Stewart's house, but . . . I'm not Martha Stewart. We keep a rolling duffel full of sparring gear for Taekwondo either inside the back door of our house or in the trunk of our car. By doing this, it's very rare that we show up for class unprepared. My sanity is more important that someone thinking less of me because my house looks lived in.

5.Keep portable snacks on-hand. Something we always kept on-hand were little single serve pouches of fruit snacks. This is something that we could just grab on our way out the door when we're running late for Taekwondo class. However, since our children had voiced how tired they were of having the same snack all the time, I started to look for other options for portable snacks. We recently tried Jif To Go® Dippers and will be adding them to our very short list of on-the-go snacks.

As a parent, I found both the contents and the packaging of Jif To Go Dippers to be very well-thought out. This product was made with children in mind. Sometimes we just have enough time to get the children off the school bus, have them change into their Taekwondo uniforms, get their backpacks, grab water bottles and a to-go snack, and head out the door. When unwrapped, you get a container of 10 to 12 pretzels with a separate container of dip. The container of pretzels is perfect for putting in one of the cup holders in the car, which works out great because our children usually finish their Jif To Go Dippers in the car before we go into class. That way, we don't need to worry about being rude by eating in front of others when we don't have enough for everyone and we don't have to worry about other students having peanut allergies. Did I also mention that my children can eat Jif To Go Dippers without making a mess on their white uniforms?

Now, what did our children think? Not only were they thrilled about having something different to eat for snack, they made sure we put Jif To Go Dippers on the list for our next trip to the grocery store. Although they enjoyed both the Creamy Peanut Butter and the Chocolate Silk Peanut Butter, they all seemed to liked the Chocolate Silk the best.

Do your children need something new for a to-go snack? Look for Jif To Go Dippers in grocery stores nationwide.